A Minneapolis ad agency came up with a creative way to cover up a billboard that was obstructing its employees' view of the downtown skyline.

Solve, at Hennepin Avenue and 12th Street, rented out the prominent billboard on top of a nearby Hennepin Avenue building that has hosted a number of flashy, colorful ads and placed a photo that perfectly depicts the skyline it blocks for Solve'semployees, said Joe Stefanson, the company's associate creative director. The ad was placed in mid-July and is scheduled to come down sometime this week.

"We've been in that space for eight years now," Stefanson said. "It's been that ongoing joke — we've been looking at new ads coming up all the time, and we wanted to see downtown."

The team got to work, sent an employee to take a photo of the buildings behind the billboard and worked to make sure the ad would line up perfectly with the view in one of its main conference rooms.

"Our employee's views. Solved." the billboard said when it came up along with a perfect replication of the buildings behind it.

"Our name is Solve, so we tried to solve issues in new ways. Our name is what we do," Stefanson said. "When we found this as a problem, we wanted to do something to solve it ourselves."

Employees at Solve are working part of their workweeks in the office, and the view was a little treat every time they worked downtown.

"It was a nice little bonus for us, as a little thank you for coming back into the office," Stefanson said.